‘I don’t know what he just said,’ Kilkenny whispered to Tao, ‘but clearly the man can work a room.’
‘You have no idea.’ She also was moved by Yin’s eloquence.
Kilkenny showed Yin how to don the balaclava and adjust his helmet. Tao slipped into the rear seat of the BAT piloted by Han and held her hand out for Yin. As the Bishop carefully climbed aboard, Kilkenny took the co-pilot’s seat.
‘Team Comms on,’ Kilkenny said clearly, activating the short-range receivers in the rest of the teams’ helmets. ‘Listen up, people. Our Mongolian egress is a no-go, so we are switching to Flight Plan Marco Polo.’
One after another, the three Night Stalkers confirmed Plan Marco Polo and tried to load the coordinates into their navigation computers.
‘Uh, Nolan?’ Han called out. ‘Our NAVCOM is negative on Plan Marco Polo.’
‘That’s because we’re going to make it up as we go along. I have a few tentative waypoints roughed in that I’ll upload to you once we’re airborne. For now, just head west.’
‘Why do you call your plan Marco Polo?’ Yin asked.
‘He was the most famous Westerner to travel the Silk Road. Since he successfully returned to Italy from China, I find him inspirational.’
As Kilkenny spoke, the pilots warmed up the engines and completed their preflight checks.
‘Those who traveled the Silk Road did so mostly by day,’ Yin offered, ‘but I recall one group who made the journey west traveling only at night. They were guided by a star.’
Kilkenny laughed. ‘Then you will be very pleased to know that we will be guided by a constellation of twenty-four stars. They’re not as bright as the one that guided the magi, but ours are accurate to within a few centimeters.’
‘Twenty-four is eight threes — a very lucky number.’
‘I can take a hint. People, Plan Marco Polo is now Plan Magi.’
One by one, the three BATs lifted off and quickly gained speed.
Yin craned his head back, watching the nomad’s camp disappear behind them. Tao noticed that his hand pressed tightly to his chest.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I am fine,’ Yin replied.
‘Terry,’ Kilkenny said to the pilot, ‘once things settle down, I’d like to get a little time behind the stick and brush up my piloting skills. We have a lot of flying ahead of us.’
‘When we’re over a nice flat stretch of nothing, I’ll run you through a refresher course.’
After flying several hours under a clear, moonless sky, Kilkenny watched the grasslands gradually succumb to the Gobi Desert. He was piloting the aircraft, and behind him Tao slept and Yin stared out with rapt fascination at the stars. Han busied himself with checking various systems while keeping an eye on Kilkenny to verify that he was on course to the next waypoint.
‘Anybody out there sniffing around for us?’ Kilkenny asked.
‘No, but when my kids are this quiet, I get nervous,’ Han replied. ‘You got any?’
‘Any what?’
‘Children. I have two boys and a girl — all under six. My house is a zoo. Those kids back there really latched onto you, so I figured you must have some of your own.’
Kilkenny thought for a moment before replying. ‘My son was to be born on the first of November. He died with my wife in August.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Han said empathetically, imagining Kilkenny’s loss.
Kilkenny shrugged. ‘Look, I’m going to let Rome know what we’re up to. If you need me, just send a ping or rap on the side of my helmet.’
‘Roger that,’ Han replied meekly.
‘Comms off,’ Kilkenny said, disconnecting his link to the rest of his team. ‘Satellite uplink on.’
Yin turned his attention from the stars to the man seated in front of him and prayed for his rescuer.
38
SETTING SON SEVEN SAMURAI
What are you trying to tell me? Grin stared at the four cryptic words he had written in neat block letters across the top line of the legal pad.
Kilkenny’s latest message departed from the Lord of the Rings theme of the first two. This in itself told Grin something had happened — some event that forced his friend to follow a different storyline from the one he envisioned. At this point in Kilkenny’s plan, the extraction team would have waited until dark before flying north across the Sino-Mongolian border. Under their guise as tourists, they would then depart from Ulaanbaatar for Rome via Germany.
The magnetic lock securing the workroom door buzzed loudly as it released, emitting a discordant note amid the middle movement of Mozart’s ‘Violin Concerto No. 3 in G.’
‘No rock ‘n’ roll tonight?’ Donoher asked.
‘Wolfgang Amadeus is better for solving puzzles.’
‘Puzzles? A crossword or that infernal sudoku?’ Donoher asked as he sat down by the workstation.
Grin handed over the legal pad. ‘A message from Nolan. I know I should get this, but for the moment it’s eluding me.’
‘That’s because you’re exhausted.’
‘Maybe, but I’m not on the run with half the Chinese military after me. I promise to get a solid eight in the sack right after our team gets the hell out of China.’
‘I share your sentiments.’ Donoher shrugged and placed the pad on the desktop. ‘Sadly, I can’t make heads or tails of this message either.’
As the digital clock display on Grin’s largest monitor reached 8:00 p.m., the screen cleared and filled with the image of Jackson Barnett seated in his office at the CIA’s Langley campus.
‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ Barnett said. ‘I see from the news that black smoke has once again emerged from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel.’
‘Yes,’ Donoher replied, ‘and I apologize in advance, but I am not permitted to discuss the election.’
‘No offense taken. Regarding our friends in the Far East, I have a great deal to report.’ Barnett flipped open a folder. ‘All crossings along China’s borders with Russia and Mongolia are closed. The normal complement of border guards has been augmented with PLA troops, and army helicopter units are out patrolling over three thousand miles of border, including the stretch China shares with North Korea.’ Barnett glanced up from his notes. ‘The last I heard, the Vatican’s relations with Pyongyang were as frosty as our own.’
‘A move in that direction would be out of the frying pan and into the fire,’ Donoher concurred.
‘The size of the troop movements we’re seeing has more than piqued the interest of the Russians,’ Barnett continued. ‘They’ve placed their own forces on an elevated-alert status. The Chinese are being typically closemouthed about what they’re doing, and the Russians, being Russians, are suspicious.
‘The city of Chifeng is under martial law, and PLA forces are visible in significant numbers at every transportation center in the country. The Chinese Navy is also making its presence known in the Yellow Sea and the Formosa Strait, countering any attempt to fly over water to South Korea or Taiwan. Antisubmarine warfare vessels have also been deployed, presumably against a submarine extraction.’
‘I wasn’t aware the Vatican possessed a submarine,’ Grin offered.
Ignoring the comment, Barnett pulled a page from his file and placed it on a document reader just off camera. The image on the screen immediately split into two windows, with Barnett on the right and a facsimile of a printed flier on the left. Three photographs ran down the side of the flier — prison shots of Yin and Kilkenny and a grainy image of Tao in uniform. Two blocks of text accompanied each image, one in Cyrillic and the other in Mongolian.